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I’m sleeping. Sort of. I was tossing and turning all night. Stresses of the day added to a damn head cold.

DING. Cell phone message alert. I think about rolling over to check it. It takes me a minute.

Mom, could you come stay with Micah? He’s still sleeping and the rest of us are leaving to go get Rachel.

I think about saying something smart-ass about the fact that I was still sleeping. But it doesn’t really matter.

Yes. Be right there. I mess around a bit, making the bed, getting dressed until I hear their car rumbling awake.

I walk the 20 steps over to their place, say goodbye to the wide-awake-gang, grab some coffee and sit down for SNL – smiles and laughter, good. I read through the local paper: American Canyon (Inc. city in Napa County) researches becoming a sanctuary city. Great. I was actually wondering about Napa City/sanctuary sometime during my sleepless laying awake bothered and bewildered hours.

Micah’s up now. He’s 4, walking around looking for the family. He lays on the couch, plays with my phone a brief few minutes. He looks a little funky to me, more laid back than the real Micah. “When will they be home?” he asks. “When will Nana be here?”

I was over at my daughter and son-in-law’s house this morning, keeping an ear out for my 4-year-old grandson playing in the next room. My fingers paused on the laptop keys as I waited for the creative juices to kick in. Please kick in. I wanted something fresh and funny for the upcoming open mic.

Problem was, I wasn’t feeling fresh and funny. I was feeling worn, torn, and battle fatigued with the overwhelming election coverage this year. The Cubs’ World Series win brought me much needed relief and excitement — even if it was drawn out over and over again. That high didn’t last near long enough. I was missing that consummate Cubs fan who killed himself ten years ago. The big win was just one more in a string of life events he’s missed out on.

An hour later, I was still looking at a white screen without one string of words to be seen.

You know why?

Well. My friend had some studying to do, so I suggested she bring her 4-year-old daughter
over to play. The more, the merrier is my motto. She dropped off her daughter along with the best of offerings — doughnuts, coffee, and hot chocolate. Woo Hoo!

Twenty minutes later, it was time to wash and dry those cute little hands and faces. Time
to chase the dog back out after she knocked one of them onto the floor. Time to put that laundry in the dryer. I checked my email. Ah hah! A personal note from the Clinton campaign. Please, would you donate just one dollar? Sure, here’s 5. Would you like to double that? Sure, make it ten. Get out the credit card and load up the webpage with all the necessary information. Thanks – want to give more? No. Not today.

Then I checked Facebook. I peeked at a bit of online campaign news. I clicked around youtube and listened to a couple of tunes. First there was Bob Dylan, then John Lennon. I felt better. Kids were playing nicely. They were chattering away and giggling in their own little world.

So, anyway, I got back to business. It was a sunny day outside and I glanced into the living room. My eyes landed on Mollie’s memorial corner. Three framed portraits hang over the aging upright piano.

Lowell: strong and courageous father of three sons, dressed in his lifelong beard and glasses. Mollie’s husband’s father, he died just last year, after a tough battle with aggressive metastatic melanoma. He was such a wonderful man, full of love and passion… a man who would do anything for his family.

Katie, my beautiful grand-daughter, gone from us much too soon. I look at her smiling, in her pensive way; I wonder what she was thinking when that picture was taken. Our hearts broke the day she died, leaving behind her baby boy Jack. Her laughter had filled our world. We miss her so much.

And Matt, my former husband, father of three, baseball fan extraordinaire, former Stratamatic player and political junkie, a voracious reader who died before Mollie even knew she’d be marrying Matt, her new boyfriend.

Each of them gone now from this world for widely different reasons, each one of them leaving a big hole in my heart. There isn’t a day that goes by I don’t imagine Katie or Matt or Lowell standing with us in the sunshine, laughing at a birthday party, playing with the kids, or repairing something or other.

You’ve been on my mind a lot today. It’s cool and rainy in Napa, your son here is out back scrubbing the pool after a wet and dirty winter. I’m pretty sure I know where you are, resting in your recliner in you nice warm spot. I bet Rachel is right there with you.

Lowell, thank you for the amazing job you did with Rachel in raising up and teaching your boys to be the best human beings they could be. They are a testament to you. Loving, hard working fathers and husbands, always ready to lend a hand to honor, love, and support those in their grasp.

PopPop, you are the very best grandpa all our little grandchildren could ever hope for. Always ready to listen to their stories, find a treat, teach a new lesson in life or how to fix some thing or another, handing out a drum lesson, or taking them all, one at a time, on a motorcyle ride.

Thank you for being such a warm and strong beacon of light for Rachel. It wasn’t easy all the time, I’m sure. Falling head over heels as teenagers, growing into adults, and marrying the love of your life. Soon enough, picking up to move from your family farms halfway across the country to build a life in Arizona.

The Millers

I’ve heard you and Rachel laughing about the years you carried water jugs spilling over to your travel trailer while you slowly but surely built up a home of your own on your own patch of land. I always feel so comfortable in your warm, safe, and cozy home in the mountains of Show Low.

You have so many blessings. I know there were difficulties. And struggles.

I’ve heard about your many adventures. Motorcycle trips, motorcycle racing, drums beating in the porch room and with worship teams. Annual trips to the family farm where you pitched in with the yearly harvest. I also heard you were still sitting up in the driver’s seat this year.

I’m so very grateful for the long trips you made to California. So happy we all went to the ocean, over the hills and down onto Stinson Beach. Did you really mean it when you said you never wanted to ride on that road again? Come on.

It was pretty comical, I have to say, after all the years of you worrying about our earthquakes, that you would be here for the last big one that summer of 2014. I cracked up when you told me you woke up thinking that it was Rachel shaking the bed. Like she would get up and do that.

Thank you for being there to help Mollie and Matt build their first house. Thank you for the new roof you and Matt put on my house a year ago. Thank you and Rachel for all your help when we first moved into our little compound almost four years ago now.

Yes. This is how you roll. Always in service. Partnering with each of your sons, and their families, to assure them a step ahead in life with their own families.

I know that you know this latest trip around the sun may very well be your last trip around that particular fiery globe of ours. It makes me so sad.

I’ve watched you and Rachel give this last year the fight of your life. I know the cancer that invaded you early last year hasn’t given up either. I’m so grateful that Hospice is helping you and Rachel to assure your last days on this earth are as caring, supportive, and loving as your first few days of life when you popped in here decades ago, right behind me.

I’m so glad we’ve had this time with together, you and Rachel and myself, growing closer over the years. It’s a special blessing that your dear Rachel and I found each other. Having each grown in a house only with brothers, we each have a sister now in one another.

All in all, you and your Millers are one of the greatest blessings that has happened to my family, and to my life.

My heart is full of love, sad with grief, and happy with wonderful memories. I don’t want you to go. It’s one thing to know that each of us is going to leave this planet for another place one day in the future. It’s another to see it happen in front of us.